


they come knocking at your door with this look in their eyes

by vashtaneradas



Category: One Direction (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:56:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vashtaneradas/pseuds/vashtaneradas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au. sometimes he feels as if he’s inside a glass jar, perhaps a grasshopper or a cricket, not wanting to move lest he is noticed by his captors. but he will talk to this stranger. he seems harmless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they come knocking at your door with this look in their eyes

**Author's Note:**

> own nothing/know nothing/obviously. completely fictionalised.
> 
> title from ben folds' not the same.
> 
> part of the bella-tries-to-move-all-her-writing-over-to-ao3 marathon of 2013.

“Hi.”

It isn’t much but it’s all Louis’ heard all day, from anyone, holed up in his small office on campus since the sun graced the top of the beautiful old builings with its presence. Sometimes he feels as if he’s inside a glass jar, perhaps a grasshopper or a cricket, not wanting to move lest he is noticed by his captors. But he will talk to this stranger. He seems harmless.

He looks up at the boy with the glinting green eyes, smiling at him, the word still leaving his lips, hi. Louis thinks he looks like a painting, like some absurdly beautiful creature crafted by an artist, Rembrandt or Velasquez. He is not a Picasso – sometimes, Louis thinks everyone is a Picasso, horribly disjointed but strangely breathtaking, but not this boy. This boy, he’s crafted by technical masters, not the furious, panicked genius of a Cubist. His words leave his lips like ink; lazy and in no rush but so incredibly beautiful.

“Hi.”

It’s all Louis replies because he is unsure, of everyone, everything. There is no guarantee of civility. He is simply here for a drink before going back to his untouchably clean apartment, to her. But the boy’s eyes sparkle – all of him does, Louis thinks – and it stills the scratching at Louis’ heart.

“I’m Harry.”

Beat, commitment, because why not, and so in he plunges.

“Louis.”

The boy – Harry, there is a name now, it’s not curly hair or green eyes or Velazquez, it’s Harry – is grinning and it’s devoid of malice but something in Louis holds back from returning it. Defence mechanisms, he thinks, the way a chameleon changes colour or a spider spits poison. For today, this is his, a steely reserve to mask any want, any desire to connect.

“Can I get you a drink, Louis?”

“Okay.”

Harry smiles, seems faintly amused.

“Okay.”

He turns to the barman to order, hands spread like puddles on the deep oak counter. It is an old bar, maybe even a 1940’s original, today it keeps some of the derelict charm, the heady disjointed atmosphere it might have had as men just like Louis drank here decades ago upon it’s opening, the Luftwaffe flying overhead.

Harry puts a whisky down in front of him, Louis is taken aback by his textures. The impossible softness of his skin; he must be nineteen, twenty, yet there’s not a hair on him. The rough thickness of his curls, courting the breeze idly, the liquid emerald of his eyes, the sparkling black and hard gold that thread through it, the birds printed underneath his skin that look as though they could fly away. Louis wants to touch. He is a tactile person, though stops himself, because wounds grow deeper if you touch, it is harder to stay controlled. But today he wants to reach out. Harry smiles, as though he knows that, can sense it like a cat.

“You okay, Louis?” he asks, and his voice hangs in the air like moisture in humidity. He brushes a hand across Louis’ knee; it is two poles, repel or attract, repel or attract. For a moment – the moment Louis will try and fail to forget – it’s attract, Harry’s fingers knead at his knee, just for a second. But Louis feels the ice shoot through him at that, the blinding cold that say, no, you shan’t, and you won’t.

So he draws away, retreats into himself like a shelled creature, downs his drink and slips his hands into his coat pocket, feels the cool metal band of his ring there, thinks vaguely that it’s the only thing harder to face than the biting cold of this winter.

He doesn’t smile at Harry because he’s not sure if the want would remain dormant if he did. So he leaves the bar without a second glance, barely registers the tugging on his heart that has become so synonymous with existing, now.

He barely registers it, that is, until he hears Harry’s voice threaded in with the sounds of the London traffic, the sounds of his head, the sounds of the man on the curb asking d’you ‘ave a dollar? D’you ‘ave a dollar?

“Bye, Louis.”

It’s airy, soft, but Louis hears it. He’s been coming here once a week for four years, always watching but never taking, always feeling the pressure of the silver – LT engraved on the inside – in his pocket, but this is the first time anyone has said goodbye.

And so it begins.

**

It becomes something of a habit. But it’s not dangerous, not like the habits Louis used to flirt with – the razors, for one thing, the cocaine, the fingers pressing to the back of his throat in the dead of night – so he doesn’t put a stop to it, at least not yet. Thinks that if this bar, this boy, is to be the latest thing his mind latches onto like a vice, then so be it. His ring burns bright in his pocket.

Sometimes, they talk. Louis buys the drinks now, because his coat is cashmere and his wallet is full, markedly different to the frayed sleeves on almost all of Harry’s clothes. They will speak, for a time, about the world, in abstracts that are detached enough to be painless. Do you think we all see the same?, Harry will ask, and Louis will smile down at his drink before answering, Yes, I think so, I think we do. Harry is the instigator, every time, and Louis follows, because the instigator is intoxicating.

Sometimes, they don’t talk. Sometimes Louis feels so dreadfully full of sorrow that he can’t speak, can’t do anything, though he always makes it to the bar. Louis has never indulged his strained mind with alcohol, not in excess. So he indulges it with Harry’s words, his smile, the unlearned elegance of his fingers, the column (Greek) of his throat. Never touches – he would be tactile, if he allowed himself, he thinks – but indulges nonetheless, his eyes drink him in like the whisky in front of them both.

On rare nights – like tonight – Harry will introduce someone he knows. Louis always sees the faintest flicker of pride, love, on his face as he does so, because he supposes there are the people Harry loves.

One time, it was the beautiful purple haired girl, Perrie, and the boy with the big, blinking eyes and dark hair, Zayn. Perrie had been fiddling with a flower she’d threaded in his hair, smoking though it wasn’t allowed. He watched the way they moved together, the way she slotted in beside him. Can’t help flinching because he wonders why he can’t do that. Zayn laughed like a lazy stream, she spoke like a wave. They were almost beautiful to watch; his earring had flashed in Louis’ face as they’d walked off together, melted into the dark like stars, like they were meant to be there.

Three weeks ago it was a boy called Liam – they are all so young, Louis thinks, yet they seem so infinitely happy – Louis thinks he seems strong, sure, stable. He and Harry had chatted aimlessly for a while, his brown eyes crinkling happily every time Harry had made him laugh. Louis wonders if, in another world, if he was born to the woman over from his mother in the hospital, if he’d moved to London when he was younger, if his father had left rather than stay in an act of selfish stoicism – one little thing, one small cosmic shift – if he would be one of Harry’s friends, introduced to his latest whim (a Louis, the person who had taken his place) at a bar.

Decides, maybe. Decides that he hopes he would be.

Tonight, the boy is called Niall. He carries a warmth with him, Louis can tell. He carries a warmth and he likes to let as many people as possible touch it, become acquainted with it.

Harry hugs him close as he saunters over, it feels different to the others, protective. Harry introduces them and Niall’s face lights up, secondary recognition.

“Oh,” he says, “Louis! We’ve heard so much about you. How are you, mate?”

Louis feels the ice start to freeze him over – because what has Harry said, because what is Louis doing here, with these beautiful, flitty strangers, when he should be at home, with her – but forces it to thaw. He won’t freeze here. Niall is warmth; there is seemingly no room for ice.

“Well, thank you.”

Niall fades away into the crowd, Louis turns to Harry, who is smirking through his hair.

“What did you say to them?”

Harry blinks, perhaps taken aback at the abruptness.

“I told them you were beautiful.”

And as always comes the last chapter, the final act. It’s the end of Mrs Dalloway’s day, it’s Fortinbras’ closing soliloquy, it’s Gatsby’s last party. It is the moment Harry says something, does something, that for Louis is too much, is a rush of blood that he can’t control. Curiosity is a motivator, fear is a paralytic. So Louis slips out, as usual, around eleven, back to the place he lives and the woman he’s married. (He does not call it home, does not call it love. He’s not found either of those things, does not expect that he will.)

**

Two weeks pass and Louis does not visit the bar. He has papers to grade, so many papers, from those bright, hopeful minds that trail in and out of his lectures year after year. He remembers that, remembers feeling lit up and inspired. He had wanted to write, fancied himself perhaps the Cunningham of the new century, an Isherwood, perhaps.

It is not his fault that the locks had not quite been broken, that the bars had not lifted like they had for everyone else. It is not his fault (but, oh, is it, that is the question) that he chose an interminable existence of dull discontent, rather than the roaring happiness that could have been his if only he had reached out for it.

It is not his fault (it is hers, he thinks in his most bitter moments, but of course it’s not, because she is his fault, in the first place) that he had stopped writing late at night.

He goes back to the bar.

“Where’ve you been, hmm?” Harry asks as the bell rings to announce his arrival. He sees a flash of recognition, of delight. It fills him like smoke, laces through his chest.

Inclusion blooms, delicately.

He slips into the bar stool next to Harry.

“Around. Out. Busy.” He’s not sure, where he’s been. All he knows is that anywhere outside this place he now refers to as the real world. It is almost ethereal here, suspended in reality. He’s not sure why, it is just a bar, in the middle of London. But then, then it is so much more.

“Well I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me too.” He does not pause. It is new.

He looks across the bar, the girl with purple hair takes a drag of a cigarette. He recognizes her as Perrie. She is seated in the lap of a boy smiling at her as though she were crafted from gold, big brown eyes fixated on her lips, her hair, the movement of her jaw as she speaks and smokes, the pitch of her laugh. The boy’s name is Zayn, Louis remembers, the boy with the black hair and deep, aching eyes. He likes Zayn, likes that he seems to be perpetually placid, evaluating rather than reacting, understanding rather than knowing. Perrie has crafted a chain of daisies, is intently putting them through Zayn’s hair as she speaks, stopping to smoke. He seems to grow tired of it after a while, drawing the cigarette from her lips and taking a drag himself, as though to distract her but centre her at the same time. They’re oddly beautiful together, seem to instinctively know how the other operates.

Zayn leans across the table as Perrie stands to get a drink, laughs loudly at something Liam – Liam, Louis remembers him, too, it’s been so long – says, before kissing him lightly, deeply, all in one. Liam rakes a hand through his hair, hums a laugh against Zayn’s lips and Zayn seems to catch it. It takes Louis by surprise. Harry notices, he almost always does.

“Funny, aren’t they?” he says, watching the way Louis’ face moves, the slight furrow of his brow and the light hitting his cheek as he cocks his head.

(Harry thinks he’s wonderful. He likes a boy who’s a secret, he’s never met one before. Everyone he knows is waiting to be read. He thinks Louis is too, of course, but he’s waiting differently. Everyone else wants it. Louis needs it. Harry intends to help him.)

“A bit. What’s…” he trails off, as Perrie comes back and takes a sip of her drink with a fond roll of her eyes. “what are they doing?”

“Being happy, I think.” Harry shrugs, smiles, asks Niall for another drink (he works here, now.) “It’s nice to be happy, Louis.”

Louis swallows, sharply. Darcy and Elizabeth have wed and the story is over, for tonight, at least. He picks up his coat, Harry doesn’t lose his smile.

“Bye Lou,” he says quietly, and for the first time he stands with Louis, walks him to the door. It feels so oddly conventional. So strange, for Harry to be coming to the door. Louis has never seen him outside the bar, in Louis’ consciousness Harry only exists here. He’s never stopped to consider Harry in the street, Harry in the nighttime air, Harry in a bookstore or a café or a lecture hall.

Harry plants a kiss on his cheek, light and sweet and so deceptively simple. Louis’ breath catches in his chest, like a dream in and amongst the crossed string and jewels.

He enters the cool evening air, back across the park and down the avenues and alleys, back to his house. His cheek burns, scalds, with the memory of that pink smile touching it.

**

Harry is a student. He studies bits of politics and pieces of history, a psychology subject or two and introduction to photography. He is a puzzle. Louis doesn’t remember what his course is called, it’s at one of the universities in the centre of town, new and garish and bright.

Harry declares that he will avoid studying English at all costs, that makes Louis laugh one night, and it’s the first time Harry’s heard him laugh. It’s the first time anyone has, for a long while.

Harry’s favourite poem is Ted Hughes’ Red, when Louis asks him why he simply says, but the jewel you lost was blue. As though it’s an answer, not a quote.

(Later that night, Louis lies sleepless in bed, her chocolate coloured hair tickling his arm. He supposes it is an answer, in a way. He shakes his head slightly, rolls over. He will not think of Harry here, Harry does not belong between these sheets.)

Harry works in a café, is twenty-and-a-half, listens to a Walkman because he’s stubbornly eccentric. His favourite Beatle is George, for no reason Louis can see other than he’s not Paul or John. Louis doesn’t much mind, George is his favourite, too.

Harry spends his evenings at the bar because he likes to be with his friends. I like you lot, he says one night, to the people gathered round him, but specifically to Louis, wink following his smile, that’s it really.

Inclusion basks in the sunlight of his words, a little more insistently.

Harry seems to be in the business of happiness. Louis likes that idea, imagines Harry selling little pieces of contentment, wearing a suit and a loosened tie, winking and charging less to the people that charm him, intrigue him.

Louis wonders how many pieces of happiness he has unwittingly bought from Harry. He decides a few.

He tells Harry almost nothing, then again he doesn’t need to. Sometimes Harry will say something like you should let yourself smile more, you have a lovely smile, or brush his fingers over Louis’ almost-always-hidden tattoo (it says sometimes terrible things have their own kind of beauty. It’s from his favourite novel by Isherwood, he’d got it when he was twenty-one, five years ago now) and says that’s beautiful. Louis will walk in and he’ll say bad day? as though he can read it on Louis, like he doesn’t need to speak to be heard.

He goes maybe three times a week, now, maybe four. He is inducted, in a funny sort of way, into the group Harry calls his friends, loves to watch them all interact and speak. Zayn owns three Fenders. Perrie has the longest eyelashes Louis has ever seen, and she knows an awful lot about space. Liam is an engineering drop out who wants to build cities. Niall’s father owns a bookshop, but he doesn’t much like to read.

And Harry, Harry is the moon.

It continues.

**

It is Christmas Eve, Louis has been visiting the bar for six months now. (She never asks, anymore. Maybe, on some level, she knows. He certainly knows, can smell the aftershave that’s not his in their sheets, recognizes clothes that are not from his back in the washing basket. Her eyes are guilty, he wonders if his are too. Then again, he has nothing to be guilty about, really. He is too scared to do anything that would make him feel that way.)

It is Christmas Eve, though, and he knows she will have a meal on the table later tonight but he will drop in at the bar, just for a moment. They do not know it is his birthday there, do not know he is now twenty-six, already embarked on the journey that will lead him to middle age.

Harry is sitting on the stoop of the bar, neon sign unlit. He smiles as Louis approaches, hands in his flimsy coat pocket.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Happy Birthday.”

Louis goes to give a gracious thank you when he stops, realises.

“How’d you know?”

Harry smiles, bites his lip and looks down for a moment. There is something there, an innocence almost, although it’s not that. A genuineness maybe; a joy.

“’S’on your licence,” he says quietly, dimple appearing like a slot in a pinball machine, “Noticed the first time you came into the bar. I never forgot. Twelve more hours and you're Jesus.” He grins, and Louis can’t help but huff out a laugh, air pooling around them both in a cloud.

Oh.

“Oh.”

Harry laughs, big and brash and unafraid, pulls out a cigarette and lights up. The flame licks at the long cylinder gripped between Harry’s index and middle finger. He’s effortlessly calm, always, there is an aura of peace about him. Like he knows what he wants, who he is, where he’s going.

“Sorry. That was proper creepy, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Louis says with a tone of surprise, “it’s just not a lot of people remember it, really. Christmas Eve and all that.”

Harry reaches out to touch him, seems to think the better of it and runs a hand through his own hair instead. It’s as though he knows now, knows that he mustn’t push. Louis is in equal parts grateful and disappointed. He clears his throat.

“Shall we go in, then?” he asks, to break the silence, and it’s awfully formal but it’s nice, the change of register. Interesting. Louis has never liked interesting before Harry, thinks it’s a good change.

Harry shakes his head, drops his cigarette into the snow and stamps in out, as though he can no longer be bothered with it.

“Nah. Closed, Lou. Christmas Eve and all that.” He pauses, it’s the first time Louis has seen him at all hesitant. It’s unsettling, like a storm on a ship. “Do you want to, umm. Do you want to come upstairs, to my place?”

“You live here?”

“Yeah. Just a few flights up.”

“Okay.”

Okay. He did not think before saying it. It’s strangely liberating.

**

Harry’s apartment is small and minimal and every bit the house of an artist. There is a canvas in the corner of the room, bright colours splashed over the surrounding walls and floor. It is rather like a Monet, Louis thinks, and maybe he was wrong. Maybe Harry is not as fine, delicate as a Rembrandt, maybe he is not the frenetic Cubist. Maybe he is a Monet; beautiful and subtle here, mad and bright there, Westminster and the water lilies all rolled into one. He isn’t sure. All he is sure of are the green eyes watching him survey the room.

“Nice place,” he says, sitting down. He is still wearing his coat, for no reason. Harry hums a laugh, pulls a bottle of wine from the stainless steel fridge.

“Thanks,” he says, “I share with Niall but he’s always off with one girl or another, so. It’s mine, mostly.”

Louis nods, accepts the glass of wine from his hands. Harry touches everything as you would glass; as though everything is fragile, breakable, precious. It’s in the way he cradles the wine, the way his fingers brush over Louis’, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not.

They drink mostly in silence, as usual. But it’s comfortable, easy, for a moment at a time Louis slips into the person he thinks he might be, should the walls so intrinsic to him not exist. He pulls himself out, of course; it may be the flash of a light or a note in a song that drags him back, but tonight they are not at the bar. It’s silent, save for the sound of the street rising up to them. Clouds spread like feathers in the sky, snow falls silently, but they cannot see, it is nighttime. All Louis can see is Harry, now, Harry and two glasses of deep red.

“How old are you today?”

“Hmm?” (That is Louis’ favourite way of being drawn out of his head, by Harry’s voice.)

“How old are you today?” he repeats, but there’s no irritation. Never is, not with Harry.

“Don’t you remember it off my licence?” Louis smiles at him after that, Harry barks with laughter. Harry likes hearing him joke, it gives him hope, he says. Louis would quite like to find a way to let Harry into his brain, let him sort through everything in there like a pile of washing. He imagines Harry would find many things he’d like, in Louis’ head.

“Can’t say I do.”

“I’m twenty-six.”

“And what’s twenty-six like?”

“The same.”

Harry nods to himself. It’s funny, the way Louis sees Harry as someone wiser, in a position of power. He is at once so much older but so, so much younger than the boy in front of him.

“Lou?”

“Yeah.”

Harry smiles fondly. “You’re doing it again. The zoning out thing.”

“Sorry.”

“No,” he says softly, “no, it’s okay. You don’t need to apologise all the time, you know.”

The thing is, of course, that he does. He doesn’t tell Harry that. Harry wouldn’t like it, would tell him to fuck it, Lou, just be happy. Louis wishes he could, wishes his life was this, this apartment, this wine, this boy. But it’s not, so.

“Okay.”

Harry fidgets, tonight. He keeps his eyes trained on Louis, smiles, laughs breathily; he seems giddy, almost. Louis can see it in his face, the way he goes to touch, to reach out. But he won’t, because he knows how it will scare Louis away. His eyes flick from Louis’ wrists, visible because his shirt is a little short in the arms, his neck, his temples. He seems to swallow Louis whole with his eyes as they speak. They are both a little off kilter tonight, maybe it is the change of venue. Something sits between them, neither can stay still, neither can stay on one topic of conversation. It’s as though they need to flit about to avoid a halt, like they will cease to exist if they stop.

“Can I tell you something?” Harry asks. Louis has never heard him ask permission before. He is bold, happy, measured but in a way that says; I know what I want. Tonight he seems unsure.

“Sure.”

“Promise…promise you won’t leave?”

Louis pauses. Sometimes he has to leave. He can’t help it.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

“I do…I do really think you’re beautiful, all the time,” Harry says. There is no embarrassment in his face, no bashful smile. His eyes glow with conviction. He is strong. “I’m never joking when I say that, Lou.”

Louis flinches. He won’t hear it, he won’t, can’t, shouldn’t, a mixture of all three, that terrible amalgam that sits in his heart, floating like leaking oil on a gulf far away.

“Harry—“

“No,” Harry says, and suddenly the ease with which Louis walked in evaporates, is replaced by a poignancy that eats away at his bones, “no, sweetheart, just…just let me do this, yeah?”

Louis is frozen. The ice has taken over now, like it does every time he has had the chance to turn want and desire into the things he craves but knows – or rather, has taught himself to think – he shouldn’t have. He is sleet.

Which is why, when Harry places a hand on his cheek and seals their lips together, Louis is startled to feel himself melt. He has never melted, before, no one has managed to get so close. Harry’s lips are warm and sweet and taste like his words, that strange mix of languid and long and so intoxicating, like incense or sunlight or flames dancing with kindling. Louis can’t help, for a moment, turning to liquid under the hand on his cheek and the lips pressed to his own, can hear nothing but his own shaky breath being released like a dove. It’s all he can hear, breath – his own and Harry’s, intermingling, remaining the only thing between them, air.

Harry’s other hand – the alabaster puddle on the counter of the bar all those months ago – snakes it’s way around Louis’ hip as he kisses him, so gentle, so sweet, the way Harry has been with him for so long now. So impossibly caring, so unthinkably kind and warm and light. But his hand curls around Louis’ hip, thumb rubbing into the soft flesh there slightly, and Louis feels himself stutter, groan into the touch, because – and he will remember this for many a year to come – because he is on fire.

He is on fire because in his twenty-five (twenty-six, a voice says vaguely, you are twenty-six now, but it hardly matters), in his twenty-five years he has never been touched like he is being touched now, has never arched up because his body, blocking out the cries, the ice in his head, has said – dictated – more. He has never felt his blood turn hot, never not been able to see for lust. He is on fire because there is a hand digging into his hip and a tongue licking at his lips, and there is a boy who treats him so, so daintily, as though he might float away if he presses harder.

Which is why Louis breaks away, wipes a hand across his mouth and inhales sharply, the snarl erupting in his head, agonizing, blinding, louder than ever. Harry’s favourite poem is Red, for some reason he remembers that in and amongst the tendrils snaking through him, it is the fact that chooses to make itself known as the panic floods his heart, clouds his head. Louis’ favourite Hughes poem is The Minotaur – deep in the cave of your ear, the goblin snapped his fingers. He wonders, as his eyes grow wide and he inches away from those unblinking, trusting green eyes, did I ever tell him that?

“Louis, sweetheart, relax, yeah, just—“

“No.” It’s strangled, it sounds the way he imagines a broken violin might, a string too taught. It’s terror he recognizes in his voice, it’s terror and hatred and it overwhelms him like a current, dragging him away from the place he wants to be (the eyes, the hair, the words, Louis, sweetheart, it is that he is dragged from).

He stands, shakily, runs a hand through his hair and whispers to himself, oh, God. Harry remains motionless, sits on the couch as his green eyes turn from emeralds to oceans, big and regretful.

“Louis,” he says miserably, “stay, please.”

“No.” It’s angrily defiant, now, it’s panic in its most wretched form. “No, I have to go.”

Louis reaches for his coat on the table, at the same time Harry reaches for his hand. Louis stands (ice, always, always, the inescapable ice), for a moment, looks down at his small hand in Harry’s and thinks, it would be so safe, here.

“You’re allowed, Louis,” Harry says, rubbing his thumb over the back of Louis’ hand. It feels like he knows this is goodbye, his grip is that fraction too tight for there to be a continuation. His voice is small, he sounds out of his depth for the first time and it frightens Louis. “You can be happy.”

But, of course, he can’t. Because Harry doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand the mess, or the ice, or any of it.

So he rips his hand away and walks out.

**

He is surprised, when he arrives shaken and small, to find his parents on his lounge, drinking a glass of white wine with her.

He blinks, a few times, adjusts to the light and the glare and the too-white smiles. Everything is white. The walls, her dress, the fluorescent lights, such a contrast from the apartment across the park, the night, his heart. He excuses himself, says he must freshen up. He must ground himself again. They cannot see him like this.

He comes downstairs with his sleeves rolled and his tie loosened, blue eyes a dull sky. They won’t notice, is the thing. So it’s okay.

It’s easy, numb, detached. He speaks to his father about the paper he is writing on Camus and Satré. His father, of course, does not much care for his opinion (he is twenty-six, the youngest lecturer on staff), but listens politely. His mother talks, for a time, to her, about politics. He is constantly surrounded by such clever women, such interesting characters in these two. It is one of the main reasons he grinds his teeth in the night, he thinks, because he will never love either; there is too much resentment, too much bitterness now. It is his fault, again.

Dinner is brought out, the grand show, it is all so surface. Louis has been doing this for years, one night is running on automatic. He knows just what to say, when to be affectionate, when to laugh. He kisses her (the taste of Harry is wiped from him with the press of her Red Berry lipstick; the taste but never the sense memory, the tingle up his spine), thanks her, smiles as they toast him.

It hides everything, of course. She laughs to hide the string of men she invites into their bed, he speaks at length about Truman Capote because without it he might cry, might tell them what they’ve done to him, that they have created the ice. (Or maybe he did it to himself, he is no longer sure. Sometimes he feels as though he is looking on from above at some horrible, twisted version of himself. Tonight is like that). His father clears his throat after every fourth word because if the silence isn’t filled then they will all start to think. His mother, she is the master, of course, he learnt from the best. The harsh, lashlike repression, the controlled smile (grimace) because dirty laundry shall not be aired, in any circumstance.

“Louis, dear,” she says tightly (always), as though she can smell it on him, the way his organs feel like they’re switching places and his eyes yearn to cry and his mouth aches to speak, like she can tell, “Louis, dear, say grace.”

He does; the words feel too big for his mouth. She grips his hand tightly, don’t you dare fucking break, he can hear the words slapping him in the face, don’t you dare, this was a lot of effort, you wouldn’t want your mother seeing you like this.

So he doesn’t, because it was, all of it; backbreaking effort.

**

Louis does not go back to the bar. It seems so selfish, evil almost, to inflict himself upon those beautiful people, their contentment. Harry’s eyes remind him of that every day, he will not go back.

They don’t see each other. Louis makes no attempt to contact him. It is done, now. It is done. He can retreat back, go back to the barely floating life he has become conditioned to. It is an endurance test. Always has been.

(Except of course, the one day it’s not, where the race picks up and for the first time, Louis wants to win, not just cross the finish line, out of breath and aching all over.)

He is sitting in a café, waiting for a colleague. They are to discuss who will make the Advanced Honours short list. It is a Thursday. Louis wears a blue tie, uncannily matched to his eyes. A girl drops her fork on the cool slate floor with a clatter. Man City are set to win against Southampton this coming weekend. Back at work, he has six papers left to mark. It is a little below freezing. He needs to buy two bottles of wine and some chicken to grill. A cab releases a brown cloud of carbon monoxide on the street.

It is a Thursday.

And as he pores over the menu, he feels a presence next to him, tapping a pencil on a notepad.

“Can I get you anything?”

Harry’s name slots into his head as he looks up to meet the green he knows is looking at him. He hears, in that moment, their breaths catch in unison, thinks back to the last time, air. Harry swallows, tries to stay placid, but Louis can see the tension under his skin; ripples just below the surface. He feels like he’s been cast into stone, as though Harry’s curls have become snakes and he now freezes in his presence.

“Just…just a latte. Thank you.”

And at that, Harry’s shoulders seem to fall, and suddenly he is the Harry Louis knows, idle limbs and honest face, he is all those evenings of purple hair and kisses between strangers, and whisky and the dark oak, he is lazy drags of hand rolled cigarettes. He is a Rembrandt and a Velasquez and a Picasso, he is a Monet, he is Clarissa Dalloway’s flowers and Laertes’ poison-tipped sword and the downfall of Jay Gatsby, he is the beauty of Dorian, the intensity of Isherwood’s ill-fated George, the numbness of Plath and the detail of Dickens and the epic rhythm of Homer, he is the idyllic home of Pemberley, he is a wretched, lost Hughes and he is all of it, impossibly, in one.

And Louis wants to tell him that, wants to imprint it on his heart, wants to feel that hand on his hip and roll into in like a wave, wants to hear his voice over a cool glass in the bar, their bar, but really any bar.

Harry stares expectantly, as though waiting for Louis to say it. Hi, a soft hi, it is all he would need. Just like the first time. Hi.

 

Louis clears his throat.

“That’s all. Thank you.”

Because really, Harry is none of those things. Can’t be, anymore, or Louis will break without him. He must leave him behind, because the oil still sits on the water, the tendrils of fear snake through him, he is conditioned to say no, to deny himself, so he does just that. Clears his throat and turns away, to pore over the list of students’ names.

Harry is a stranger. Louis is ice.


End file.
